MG TC rear spring mystery

[TomB]

Hi to all!
My name is Tom, I am 55 years old and live in Germany. I have bought recently a 1947 MG TC in a nice condition. But I am asking me one thing regarding the rear eye of the rear springs. Normally the eye of the spring is at the top, but here it is in the bottom position. Could there a good reason why it is mounted this way? See attached photo, please.

Thanks for your help in advance.

Tom

[Duncan M]

Hi Tom-
It should look like this:
[attachment=0]IMG_3164.jpg[/attachment

[Steve Simmons]

Well there's something you don't see every day. Definitely not correct. Honestly I'm surprised it works that way. Either the previous mechanic didn't know any better, or maybe it had the wrong springs?

[Tim Jackson]

Another view of TC rear spring shackle

[TomB]

Thank you for your answers. Before I wrote here, I browsed a lot of photos in the Internet, had a look into the owners manual, parts lists and everywhere the eye is at the upper position. Of course. So I asked me, why somebody makes such a thing? I know that the car was several years ago in a car shop and on the invoice stand something like “rear spring was not in correct position. Changed that and manufactured a special plate”. And it is a car shop especially for classic British cars…
But you confirmed me my idea that it can’t be correct. And that there is no good reason to do something like this.
So I have to change the position to the correct one and I hope that this will work.
I have to think about which way the best and easiest is for this project.

Kind regards

Tom

[Will]

Weird! Could it be that the spring is upside down?
Note they should be a 9 leaf spring. And if you need new ones Jones Springs in the UK do a good replacement. With NTG UK for the bushings.

[Rob Reilly]

There is spring data for all models in the Blower manual.
In my copy the TC springs are on page 506.

TA rear spring data.pdf

(1.99 MiB) Downloaded 19 times

[cdrolshagen]

Hi Tom,
spring above swivel pin is correct

Gruß Carl

[TomB]

Hi Will, Rob and Carl and thank you for your answers.

Will: The springs are mounted in the correct direction. They have 9 leafes.

Rob: Thank you for the information. It seems that the correct springs are installed.

Carl: Thank you for the photo. And there I have another question regarding the links at the shocks: Is it correct that are at the front end the longer links and at the back the shorter ones? I have here now a TC which belongs to a friend and saw that his car has the short links at the front, the long ones at the rear.

Kind regards

Tom

[cdrolshagen]

Tom,
so far I can see, both the sme lenght

IMGP2462.JPG (57.73 KiB) Viewed 349 times

cheers Carl

[TomB]

Hi Carl,

another mystery.... At the both cars I have here, they have different lengths for front and rear. And I browsed at parts dealers and they offer different lengths for the front and rear.

Kind regards

Tom

[Steve Simmons]

Originally the front links are almost 2" longer than the rears.

[TomB]

Hi Steve,

thank you. Then my TC has it correct.

Kind regards

Tom